Because the time he would spend changing it (and learning how the project codebase is structured, and setting up the environment, etc, etc.) would be orders of magnitude higher than if the same change was done by someone who actively works on the project.

Because even if he writes a patch, it might be rejected and then all his effort will be effectively wasted.

Besides, this is not a valid response anyway. If the code browser should have had line number support and didn't get it for seven years, then clearly there is some problem. Pinning that problem on the person who first spoke about it doesn't really improve anything.

What I said was that there already are places to bring your ideas and criticism. You say "the code browser should have had line numbers support" - well, by what right is that a necessity? If it really was such a bad idea to not have line numbers, you'd think people would be all over this for the past 7 years. They weren't, because there already is a way to figure out the line numbers. It might be a matter of taste whether their old solution did the job, but that's why I think it's a sign of how the consensus has shown that it wasn't needed.

Now the tables have turned - somebody went through the trouble to get the code done, enough people were convinced that it's a good idea and it has been accepted. So what's your beef here? The process works just fine.

Just because you or the person you are defending wouldn't go through the trouble doesn't mean that it wouldn't be taken over by other people once a critical mass is built.

It's all fine and well to bitch about hypothetical issues, but I don't see how you can do that in a topic that screams the exact opposite.

You keep turning this into something more melodramatic than it really is by using words like 'insist', and like 'bitch'. That's not conducive to a discussion.

Somebody pointed out what they think is a flaw in some product. In one sentence. Your defensiveness to that sentence is just way out of proportion. It's not unsurprising nobody's responding. A downvote is the appropriate response.

Elsewhere you said:

"you don't need to act surprised.."

That is passive-aggressive. You're insinuating surprise that I can't see. And you're claiming the surprise is pretend. A lie. Who wants to respond to that?

I guess my defensiveness stems from me being in a similar field as a FOSS developer. I have seen far too many times that people prefer to "bitch" about an issue instead of even notifying me about it. In fact, people love to "bitch" about issues that aren't even there (as an example, the classic "Firefox is slow" is almost always a matter of somebody who has used and upgraded for a long time, resulting in an application with too much baggage - of course a freshly installed application will outperform 6 years of history, cookies, passwords, extensions etc.).

I really wasn't talking about "the flaw in some product", because whether it's a flaw is subjective and also whether it's a product is subjective. They are trying to force a discussion that goes against the very nature of the subject. That is the reason why the discussion is not appreciated - they cannot have the discussion they want and so they ignore mine.

As for "don't need to act surprised" - sorry, that's really what is happening here. I see a lot of people who are bending over backwards making the case that line numbers should have been there for 7 years ("now! finally they get to it! how crazy to take so long!") and share the cognitive disconnect that they apparently have a desire to moan about the FOSS process being broken while actually being witness to a situation where it worked.

Cue them moaning about whether or not "OSS projects [are] immune to criticism merely because you can fix them, given enough time?". No, they are not. This is an example where it worked. Don't act surprised.

I don't think the original commenter is trying to accomplish anything. It's such a minor issue. Passing judgment isn't about wanting to effect change at all. Judgment is about deciding between say firefox and chrome. (Now this is a minor dimension, so hopefully nobody's using it as a basis for the decision.)

Let me turn the question around. If you want to accomplish something why would you use confrontational language? I'm certain you too realize that and aren't trying to convince anyone of anything. You just need to vent. So, if both sides are like this, what's the point of discussion?

The only thing to do with judgment is to take it in the chin (maybe correcting gross factual inaccuracies) and move on. Anything else sheds more heat than light. If that seems unfair, remember that I have no users in my open source projects, and would kill for someone to try it long enough to judge it. (links in profile)

As for your project - phew, that is miles over my head, sorry. Trust me, though, traction can also be a curse. At a certain level, you start to get people who don't criticize your software or code, they criticize you for their own inability to use it.

The bug was opened in 2004.

In 2004 it was the same developer-focussed feature that it is today. I suppose it's only that today, the community is more concerned with developers and back then, people didn't mind as much. I still don't, as an n=1 example.